Monday, December 28, 2015

Reactions to the fourth installment of Daniel Enness's Safe Space as Rape Room: Science Fiction Culture and Childhood’s End at Castalia House.

I just wanted to thank you guys for talking about this. I myself am a
survivor and have no Earthly idea why this stuff isn’t talked about by
the other “side” in this. It makes me a bit sick to talk about it or
read about it, but given the kind of fiction I enjoy reading it always
sort of worms its way back into my attention. I also get a sort of
garbage feeling if I say nothing or at least don’t voice my support for
people speaking out.Granted, I disagree with a lot of what you guys have to say a lot of
the time, but bless you for saying this and I happily defend and support
your right to say the rest. I’m very sad of late to see that ideas are
now held as either dangerous or above reproach. As if we are all not
made poorer by the silence of a refusal to debate. I hold your
willingness to talk about this as proof absolute of the necessity of
maintaining diversity of ideas so that there are always people around to
call out other people for doing horrible things. The other “side”
deserves to be called out on this and I thank you for continuing to do
so.
- Andrew

This article in general – and Dozois’ comments in specific – helps me
understand why I no longer purchase modern SF: perverts and enablers
have gained publishing power, and have turned the genre into their
personal playground. When I tried to get back into SF in the mid-2000s,
I started off with Dozois’ yearly collection … and was promptly annoyed
at how the pacing of stories would be ruined by the seemingly
obligatory insertion of “non prudish” (to paraphrase Dozois) elements
that were irrelevant to plot or character development. These
distractions make the collection as a whole read as amateurish with a
light creepy undertone. I shifted over to Hartwell’s yearly collection
and found the selection a bit less annoying, but the overall quality of
both of those collections remained poor. Hartwell’s collection is
apparently no more, and I couldn’t care less if Dozois goes away.

If
there is going to be a renaissance of quality SF, it will have to come
from publishers with a mindset that the sort of writing represented by
Delany’s doesn’t have any sort of merit other than that of studying a
deranged mind. It is beyond me how anybody can read his work and not
get creeped out and repulsed; to praise such an author’s works makes me
seriously question the mental health of the persons quoted above. The
overall trend of SF sales now makes sense: most readers don’t want our
SF with a serving of creepy pervert.
- Hohokam

WARNING: The linked post deals seriously with child sexual abuse in
science fiction and extensively quotes from the work of a science
fiction author who endorses, and is believed to have engaged in,
criminally abusive sexual behavior. Not for the faint of heart; contains
vulgarities, obscenities, and descriptions of extraordinarily deviant and
disgusting behavior. It is a grim, but factual description of the
depravity that is not only tolerated, but actively celebrated in the science fiction world.

Readers under the age of 18 should not, under any circumstances, read the linked post as it juxtaposes various comments about the SFWA Grand master and suspected homosexual child molester Samuel Delany with quotes from Delany's own work, which is considerably more depraved than the average individual is likely able to imagine. This warning is not a joke. You won't enjoy it. You won't find it titillating. It will simply sicken you and hurt your soul. This is something you need to leave to the adults.

And yet, the adults must deal with it. The rock must be overturned. The evil must be exposed and the rot must be excised. The science fiction world has continued to avert its eyes from Delany's behavior for decades, just as it previously averted its eyes from the behavior of known child molesters in their midst, such as SFWA members Marion Zimmer Bradley and Ed Kramer, until well after they were safely dead or imprisoned.

As for the SJWs and fandom, while you may not like the source, the fact of the matter is that because we are the outsiders, we are the only ones with the courage to confront the evil that lurks among you. Even if you hate us, even if you hate what we stand for, you should hate what the monsters in your midst are doing to your children and to your community even more. If you can't find common ground with us in actively opposing the molestation of children, how on Earth can you expect us to be interested in finding any common ground with you at all?

George Martin loftily announced the following in reference to the Sad Puppies: "When people behave badly (in fandom or out of it), or do things that I
find immoral or unethical, I reserve the right to speak out about it, as
I did about Sad Puppies 3 last year."

So, what are we to make of the obvious fact that he has been in fandom for literal decades, but has never found any of the behavior of the various child molesters of his acquaintance to be worth speaking out about?

63 Comments:

Disgusting beyond belief. Long time I go, I found out about SFWA and it became a goal of mine to join. After all of the puppy wars and the fact that so many of them are pedo supporters I can't even stomach reading anything by these people. It makes me sick.

As a longtime fan of RAH, finding out that he had such things to say was not exactly pleasing. I'm going to go with the assumption that he knew nothing of significance towards Bradley's guilt, and instead was responding to what he thought was a witch-hunt.

The alternative is not a pleasant thought. But I have no specific love for any other author listed, although admittedly I had previously thought better of McCaffrey than that.

"As if we are all not made poorer by the silence of a refusal to debate...."There's a reason that the "privilege" of "Motion to revisit the issue.." is reserved for folks on the prevailing side, after all Robert's Rules (Bob's your uncle?)chicanery has been exhausted.Weighed, measured, found wanting. Gavel down. With prejudice. Conversation over. (Code Duello) You, yes YOU, may NEVER personally bring this issue up, ANYWHERE again!*sigh* That's what sock puppets, impressionable sophomores, and other "failure to launch" useful idiots are FOR!CaptDMO

These are the people who constantly attack others for the crime of ASSOCIATION with Vox Day. They wrongly think that people who simply associate with someone tacitly agree with everything they say about everything. There are pogroms to get people to disassociate with Vox for his views on women and immigrants. Yet somehow Delany's pornographic regurgitations are fine?

Given that SJWs believe that ASSOCIATION = AGREEMENT, their association with Delany is despicable.

At this point I don't know if the more knowledgeable fans are ignorant of the issues, in denial or lacking judgement. There does appear to be a strong push from the usual suspects to push the party line and ignore the behavior, if not celebrating it.

Some examples can be found in a recommended holiday reading list and the following comments:

If you peruse the comments you will notice two interesting trends: 1) Any honest critical opinion of Ancillary Mercy is attacked aggressively. 2) Delany is recommended and celebrated, even though his odious nature should obvious from skimming a few paragraphs at Wikipedia.

The problem is that the depravity is buried, the TOR culture is pushed and the average genre reader has no idea what is going on. There's still enough good and decent books to keep a fan busy for awhile, but not everyone is aware of the nasty dissonance in science fiction.

Another problem is that many authors that "appear" to be fighting for the right issues in the genre on the literary front, are accepting of the bad ilk in film and television. This is true of some of the Sad Puppies and has been evident in some of their recent blogs. It's an visual arts Achilles heel.

This SEEMS like demonic evil regurgitated on every other page, but everybody else is telling me that it's le art and that feeling of disgust is just me learning to appreciate le art. It is a naive response to it, and soon my mind will be expanded, and I will have a mature response.

They care about the evil crime of child abuse as much as they care about the evil crime of rape: not at one, not one bit, except insofar as it can be used against the enemy, traditional European and European-American men.

You have to be aware of the problem first. Most people aren't aware and are constantly submerged in a environment that doesn't promote critical effort. It's Huxley's "Brave New World" and people love their servitude.

One of the greatest arguments in favor of homeschooling as far as I'm concerned is that I and other homeschoolers of my acquaintance find this an easy choice, almost a non-choice, while those of my generation who did school the normal way seem mostly to struggle with this, some not even seeing "the other way around" as an option on the table. Their minds are simply not free, unless they were blessed with a strongly independent mind to begin with.

That Ars Technica reading list holds practically no interesting or attractive recommendations outside of Three Body Problem and perhaps one or two others. That's a problem when a description of the "best" of the genre turns off what should be a strong potential reader.

I was a Science Fiction and Fantasy fan pretty much as soon as I began to read. Was checking out Andre Norton and Heinlein Juvies from the grade school library once I became aware of them. I have continued to read in the genres throughout my life, but never attended a con or otherwise participated in "organized" fandom. Therefore, I was unaware of these issues until recently.

Having became aware of them, my first reaction is to wonder just what it would require to be considered a "Truefan."

I'm not kidding. Does becoming a "Truefan" require, if not active participation in, at least passive acceptance of deviant sexual behavior?

"That Ars Technica reading list holds practically no interesting or attractive recommendations outside of Three Body Problem and perhaps one or two others. That's a problem when a description of the "best" of the genre turns off what should be a strong potential reader."

It's a symptom of the disease. You can see the few people that questioned the list are personally attacked as if they were deficient. Ancillary Justice seems to be a litmus test.

The fact the Delany is brought up at all is fascinating in a perverse way, since he would have been barely mentioned 5 or 10 years ago.

I'm not kidding. Does becoming a "Truefan" require, if not active participation in, at least passive acceptance of deviant sexual behavior?

I'm not sure at what point I became a sci-fi fan, but I first read Starship Troopers at the age of 13, and then Ender's Game the following year.

As far as "deviant sexual behavior" is concerned, there's a lot I'm willing to tolerate. Pedophilia is not one of those things; I completely understand and agree with the social taboo against having children engage in sexual relationships with adults, and despite admitted pedophiles claims of how "mature" their victims are, clearly maturity isn't what they are after, or else they'd be pursuing sexual partners in their own age group.

It might be that there really is a lot going on in the direction of sexual desire in 13-year-olds, but that hardly justifies an adult, less so someone twice or more their age, engaging in a sexual relationship with them. That Breedoggle guy even admitted that it was an "asymmetrical relationship".

The way those people talk about Delany, they sound like Chris Matthews having a leg tingle. Sick, sick, sick. "Some of that dog vomit was a bit bitter and gristly, but it was important dog vomit, and I'm honored to have eaten it."

Leo, there isn't any reason to warn young readers not to follow the link if you're simply going to recreate the disgusting aspects of Delaney's work here. Please don't do that; you can sufficiently express your disapproval of Delaney's work without actually detailing the precise aspects of which you disapprove.

Having read the Delany excerpts, all I can say is that I have no idea why anyone would consider it to be "pornographic" at all.

I've known women who like hairy and sweaty men, associating it with wilder aspects of masculinity, but they prefer "clean" sweat, or so I've been told. Apparently its a pheromones thing. They don't like their wild men to be filthy.

Whereas Delany writes an intentionally filthy character, and the scenes only get worse from there. What's supposed to be titillating about it, even if one happened to be a homosexual, I have no idea. I'm guessing Milo would agree with me. Either this simply doesn't work for heterosexuals, or this is really, really far down the rabbit hole of "mentally disturbed".

1. The desire to cover their faces for shame, because they know their deeds are evil.

2. Trying to appropriate ancient symbols of wisdom and veneration. These people dearly wish to be held in high regard for their sick ideas. This is why they CAN NOT restrain themselves from writing about it and even giving interviews affirming it.

And yet, the adults must deal with it. The rock must be overturned. The evil must be exposed and the rot must be excised.

This is the sad truth. Avoidance and denial only allowed these degenerates to flourish around the edges of a crumbling society. They need to be sought out and dealt with. It's not going to be fun work, but it needs to be done.

Adult or not... let us not pretend that you can read something like Hogg and come out of it unscathed. Just as things cannot be unseen... things cannot be unread. The fact is... you can dig up the worst of Alt.sex.stories and many will not plumb these depths of evil.

After reading all parts of the linked post, I had gone to wikipedia to see what was said about Marion Zimmer Bradley there. There is indeed a section on her page about the child sex abuse allegations.

Oddly enough, one of the three paragraphs under that section are about how other authors 'distanced themselves' from her after the 2014 allegations were made. Of course Scalzi's name is first! Huh? What relevance is that to MZB's wikipedia page? a full 10% of the citations for her page are about author who 'distanced' themselves from her.

Harlan Ellison, in his polemic against splatter flick horror, said that the reliance upon shocking the audience is a sign that a genre is bankrupt of new ideas. That the reliance upon sex and census level diversity happened during a paucity of new ideas is no accident.

As for the series, nominate it, please. I've noticed that the con crowd is the vector for all sorts of fannish diseases, whether it be what led to the rise of Gamergate, the degradation of science fiction as a genre, the cosplay controversies, or the pedophilia common to all. Expose it, make people deal with it, or destroy it if they won't. This subculture needs a scourge.

Fortunately I read a few of Delaney's more mainstream works while I was in college, and found them so poorly written that I never had any desire to read anything else of his. So I knew that anyone claiming his work was "art" was a moron who shouldn't be listened to.

I know why they picked Delany to be their object of adoration. Gay, blackman, that was all he had to be.

But I'm willing to bet that most of us have now read more of Delany than Jo Walton, Cat Rambo or Rachel Swirsky every did. Honestly, none of them could look at a page of that stuff. Scalzi could probably dissect it without the slightest flicker of emotion but there isn't a single Offedappopotamus on the SFWA board who could read this stuff without going into a coma.

It doesn't speak well of them you understand but I'm certain that none of them have read anything by Delany.

From the link-"Walton: “As a new writer Delany was a revelation. He’s gay and African-American and this intersectionality of experience gives his work dimensions that genre SF hadn’t seen before,"

Did no one tell him that diseased nigger child rapers are a stereotype? I guess he doesn't get the same news I do.

There does appear to be a strong push from the usual suspects to push the party line and ignore the behavior, if not celebrating it.

Over the years I have seen several SJW parents that seemed willing to offer up their children as sacrifices to prove their die verse city bona fides. One infection control nurse kept pushing for me to be a mentor to vulnerable kids, after I told her that I couldn't because I was gay, and only stopped after I said my cousin teaches the Eddie the Eagle NRA gun safety course for kids.

"This warning is not a joke. You won't enjoy it. You won't find it titillating. It will simply sicken you and hurt your soul."

Well at least whoever asked about the connection between gay men and extravagant shower set ups should have figured why his neighbor keeps having illegals come over to his house.

Walter Breen is quite clear on the matter of adult to adult homosexual relationships...that it is an artificial reaction to the puritanical abolition of adult-child sex. He finds gays against pedophilia to be a corruption of pure homosexuality.

@15 It's not just Delaney. If memory serves, there was something like that in Disch's "On Wings of Song", 36 years ago now. A normal male is disgusted by the sight of homosexual trysts in bathrooms, but as I recall the protagonist was described as having a thrill when he saw one for the first time. (I could have the book wrong.)

I made it through Dhalgren once as a young teenager, although I did skip past the sex scenes. Several years later having forgotten the squick factor I tried to read it again and didn't make it to 40-50 pages in.

My wife reads a lot of paranormal romance/urban fantasy and just to have something to read I have picked up some of them. I gave up on Laurel K. Hamilton on the 3rd or 4th book when I had to skip 50+ pages for an interspecies (human/vampire/were-animal) orgy.

I hadn't realized she was doing the same thing for most of the authors, although usually not that bad. She said she ends up skipping 10% on average, which is less than when she tried reading regular romance!

"Oddly enough, one of the three paragraphs under that section are about how other authors 'distanced themselves' from her after the 2014 allegations were made."

Somewhat disingenuous, one might reflect, since the Breendoggle and the rest of the facts have been known for far longer than that. Conversions not because of morals but because of possible media interest.

There's another SF writer who is sexually depraved: William S. Burroughs. Some of his stuff, such as _Nova Express_ and the _Cities of the Red Night_ are clearly science fiction. Burroughs depicts in his fiction gay sex with adolescent boys.

Burroughs is unreadable over half the time. His writing is, literally, word salads. Maybe Castilia House could do an article about Burroughs.

It isn't hard to imagine, Vox, you having had become president of that foul organization only to discover ... to realize at some formal function that you were in the midst of a great number of unwashed and perverse "artists". Such an occasion and realization that you were in the company and leader of eaters of the dead that relish the flesh of the living young. In truth such is the case now of modern day vampires of the living with the exception you are not, by God's grace and love, a leader amongst perverters of the the mind, body and soul. Such would surely be the making of a real life horror story.I cannot help but ask you what you would have thought and done if such a situation were to have actually occurred during the annual formal function when such a realization might have occurred?